Nixie is a wearable drone that takes selfies

Intel recently ran a competition to find the best new ideas for wearable tech and the winner was a bizarre device called Nixie, a drone that straps to your wrist and can be flung into the air to take selfies.

The user just pulls the device from their wrist and then throws it out in the direction he or she wants the selfie to be taken from. Nixie will then detect it has been detached and unfurl its straps to become the arms for the rotors, then level itself, sense which direction it was thrown – and thus which direction to face, position itself a couple of metres away and take a photo of you before flying back to you. All within a couple of seconds.

Along with the gyroscopes and accelerometers typical of a drone it uses Intel’s RealSense depth-sensing camera technology to aim the camera.

Nixie won $500,000 for winning the Intel Make It Wearable award back in November and it is still putting this money to use perfected the technology. As such there’s no release date or price for Nixie yet.